Near complete Australopithecus anamensis skull found; face reconstructed

[essentialsaltes]

For the first time, paleontologists have discovered a near-complete skull of Australopithecus anamensis. The fossil, a bony visage with a protruding jaw and large canine teeth, dates back 3.8 million years, indicating that A. anamensis probably overlapped with Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis, for at least 100,000 years.

"What we see is a unique combination of adaptations that was apparently stable across a million years or more," Kappelman said. "Instead of studying these ancient fossil hominins as simply our ancestors, it is equally important to understand them as once-living animals that were well adapted to their particular environments; this latter approach permits us to better understand the sorts of selection pressures that drove human evolution."

 

[Chris V++]

What a weird looking monkey skull.

 

[Nithavela]

What a weird looking monkey skull.

Ape, not monkey. Close, though.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

What a weird looking monkey skull.

Looks like it's had some crush distortion.

 

[Bungle_Bear]

What a weird looking monkey skull.

Goading is against the rules

 

[Cimorene]

That's super cool.

 

[Chris V++]

Goading is against the rules

You're right and I'm sorry for being rude.

 

[Shemjaza]

Super cool.

I don't think these guys will light much of a fire under the Creationists, given that they are already happy to label Australopithecus afarensis as "Just an ape.".

 

[Jimmy D]

It's an interesting find.

I saw it on the BBC news this morning, it really got on my nerves that they were saying that it challenged "our understanding of human evolution" because A Afarensis was previously considered the direct human ancestor or some such nonsense.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

It's an interesting find.

I saw it on the BBC news this morning, it really got on my nerves that they were saying that it challenged "our understanding of human evolution" because A Afarensis was previously considered the direct human ancestor or some such nonsense.

I could have written this exact post. It doesn't change anything, as linear human descent has long ago been abandoned for the 'braided stream' theory with hybridisation and so forth, to boot. Some pop-science writer was just padding his article.

 

[Shemjaza]

It's an interesting find.

I saw it on the BBC news this morning, it really got on my nerves that they were saying that it challenged "our understanding of human evolution" because A Afarensis was previously considered the direct human ancestor or some such nonsense.

I guess "Scientists find cool new skull fossil of hominid we've known about for half a century" doesn't sell papers.

 

[Ophiolite]

I could have written this exact post. It doesn't change anything, as linear human descent has long ago been abandoned for the 'braided stream' theory with hybridisation and so forth, to boot. Some pop-science writer was just padding his article.

The BBC has changed in the last seven or eight decades, as revealed by this item. Here is an extract:

But 87 years ago, on 18 April 1930, the BBC's news announcer had nothing to communicate. "There is no news," was the script of the 20:45 news bulletin, before piano music was played for the rest of the 15-minute segment.

 

[mark kennedy]

It's really cool when they can find a complete school, reconstructions are always iffy. This article left a lot of questions, what's the overall cranial capacity. The morphology hardly looks human, it really doesn't match modern apes which is like Christmas for paleontologists.